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Friday, April 1, 2016

Clothing brands are a dime a dozen these days. It doesn’t take much to order some standard cotton t-shirts and put a cool looking logo on them. When Lifestyle Over Luxury was conceived a year and a half ago, somewhere 100m off the coast of Australia - that’s the exact opposite of what we set out to do.

Cotton is one of the most chemical intensive crops in the world. It occupies 2.5% of the world’s agricultural land but is responsible for 22.5% of the world’s insecticide use and 10% of the global pesticide use. Over a million agricultural workers are hospitalized each year from exposure to these chemicals while working on cotton plantations. A lot of these chemicals end up in what you’re probably wearing right now - a considerable amount runs off and ends up in waterways and eventually the ocean. All this in the name of cheap product production.

Lifestyle Over Luxury was founded to make a difference in people’s lives; to inspire them to look at life a little differently, define their own success and break away from the routine lives we’ve all come to accept as fulfilling. L/L was inspired by leaving that normality behind and years of travelling this incredible planet - walking the beaches, surfing the oceans, exploring the forests. It was impossible not to gain an incredibly heightened respect for this amazing place we all live. It was also impossible to overlook the devastating impact we’ve had on it.

When it came time to create something tangible out of the L/L ideology, we weren’t going to become a part of the problem we’d seen first hand. Our clothes are all sustainably made in Canada from bamboo and organic cotton. Bamboo is one of the fastest growing textile plants in the world. It doesn’t require replanting like cotton - so it’s less taxing on the agricultural land. It’s naturally disease and insect resistant so pesticides and insecticides are not required. Best of all, it’s ridiculously soft and comfortable. Organic cotton is made naturally without the use of insecticides or pesticides.

We wanted to go beyond just producing a sustainable product. We wanted L/L to develop a 360 degree sustainability approach where production and sales were both making a difference. We are so stoked to be working alongside Living Oceans to make this happen. We donate $1.00 from every single sale directly to their Clear the Coast project - this is leveraged by Living Oceans for matching funding and results in an entire garbage bag of trash cleaned up off our shores with every single L/L sale.

At our current rate by 2050 the weight of plastic in the ocean is going to outweigh the fish. We’re surfers, sailors, divers and adventurers addicted to exploring this world - this is not the kind of world we want to live in. Imagine our kids paddling out through this generation’s trash. I doubt that’s the world you want either. Every dollar you spend is vote cast for the world you want to live in. What are you voting for?